There are far better bets than to take a chance on me.
A knot formed in her stomach. Was she being incredibly foolish taking this jump? Utterly naive? Because that sandbox Harrison had talked about...it wasn’t her world. This wasn’t her world. She could easily get eaten alive.
His arms tightened around her. She nestled into him as the fireworks came to an end. Faith required a whole lot more determination than that type of thinking.
She stood by Harrison’s side as he and Evelyn waved the guests off in the driveway. If his mother thought her presence there of interest, she didn’t show it.
When most of them had left, except for a few stragglers still partying on the dock with Coburn, Harrison clasped her hand in his and they walked toward the house.
The big mansion was silent after the noise of the crowd. They climbed the stairs to the guest rooms, but Harrison didn’t stop there; he kept going up the next flight toward his.
“Tongues are wagging,” she said quietly as they walked down the hallway toward his suite.
He twisted the knob on the door to his room, opened it and pushed it in with his palm. “Let them.”
The room was impressive and warm with its elaborately carved wood fireplace and king-size bed. Harrison came up behind her, put his lips to the nape of her neck and sent shivers down her spine. She leaned back into the heat of his mouth, into the storm they had unleashed. Because she was most certainly in love with him. And she’d been brought up to trust her heart. She only hoped she could trust Harrison with hers.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ROCKY ADJUSTED TO his former home far more easily than Frankie did. He’d resumed his habit of swimming lazy circles to show off his magnificent burnt orange color, his elegant snout pitched in her direction to make sure she was watching, as well as his more frequent naps on the enticing, mossy crystalwort that lined the bottom of the tank.
He’d also clearly taken a cue from the more relaxed demeanor of his owner. Frankie was happy to be back with Coburn where she knew exactly what was expected of her. The work was challenging and satisfying and if there was a part of her that missed the excitement of working with a man whose multiple facets posed a different challenge every minute of the day, she had more than enough of that to contend with in her burgeoning relationship with Harrison outside the office.
He was complex and intense in everything he did, including the bedroom, where he was demonstrating just how passionate and multifaceted a relationship between a man and a woman could be.
Heat drew a curtain across her cheeks. That was where she liked him the most: in bed, where he couldn’t get enough of her; where he showed how he felt without the words he couldn’t seem to find. He had awakened a side of her she hadn’t known existed. A confident, vital part of her that suggested maybe she wasn’t so ordinary as she’d always suspected; that maybe she was much more than that. And although she still wasn’t completely sure he wouldn’t break her heart, she grew more confident every day in what they had. And one day at a time was how she’d promised herself she was going to play this.
Rocky swam another lazy circle in front of her, his beady eyes staring at her. “Yes, you’re gorgeous,” she told him, shutting her computer down as Coburn put on his coat. “But now I must leave you for a glass of wine and a good book.”
“Not with my brother tonight?” Coburn came to stand by her desk.
She shook her head. “He’s having dinner with Tom Dennison.”
His mouth lifted in a wry tilt. “A full-court press, I’d say. They want him badly.”
But did Harrison want them? It was a question she kept asking herself as she got to know the enigmatic man better and better—one she hadn’t been able to answer yet. “Far more illustrious company than I,” she offered drily, pulling her bottom drawer open and reaching for her bag as the elevator chimed its arrival.
Coburn’s eyes moved past her to the elevators. “I think you underestimate your appeal.”
She turned. Registered the dark and dangerous presence of the man who was her lover striding toward them. Her pulse shifted into overdrive. Although his eyes had the bruised look of someone who had slept even less than usual of late, undoubtedly due to his showdown with Anton Markovic next week, and the frown that marred his brow made him look forbidding, he was still the most handsome, electric man she’d ever encountered.
The trace of suspicion in his ebony eyes as his gaze flicked to Coburn’s position beside her desk sent a warm, heated feeling through her. She liked him jealous. It made him just that little bit vulnerable she needed to get inside.
“H,” Coburn greeted him. “Dennison stand you up?”
“I canceled.”
Canceled?
Coburn straightened, moving away from her desk and the line of fire. “I’m taking it you aren’t here for me. In which case, I’m going to get going. I’m meeting friends.”
Harrison nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
Frankie caught the flash of emotion that passed through Coburn’s eyes as he said good-night to her. He wished Harrison would confide in him. The distance between the brothers was becoming so clear to her. She waited until Coburn had stepped on the elevator and left before turning her gaze on the man who’d taken his place. “You know it hurts him when you shut him out like that.”
He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and brought her to her feet. “Coburn and I are complicated. Don’t get in the middle.”
But she knew he didn’t bite now, despite his reputation. “Was it always like this?”
His ebony eyes flattened into a matte black. “No. We were close once.” He slid an arm around her waist and pulled her close. “We took two different paths. It’s years of history. Stop digging.”
“Okay,” she murmured, suddenly feeling out of breath as he bent his head toward her. “There are security cameras here...remember?”
He kissed her anyway, the heat of his mouth burning through any resistance she had. She curled her fingers into the lapels of his jacket and kissed him back. He didn’t stop until she was fully distracted, a deep sigh pulling from her throat.
“Have dinner with me tonight,” he murmured huskily against her lips. “Unless you have plans...”
“With a pizza box and a book.” She pulled back and studied his weary face. “Why did you cancel?’
A grimace stretched his lips. “I can’t think when they’re all over me.”
Yet he’d chosen her to be with. Heat radiated from her chest, spilling into every part of her. “Yes,” she accepted, running her fingers over the taut skin of his cheek. “If you agree to order pizza.”
He produced the pizza and a bottle of Chianti, an easier battle than it might have been given it was Elisa’s night out and his food snob tendencies couldn’t take over.
“You know,” she murmured when they’d demolished the pizza on the sofa in the showpiece of a living room, “this decor doesn’t suit you at all. It doesn’t say anything about who you are.”
His lips curved. “I could tell you hated it from the minute you walked in.”
“I don’t hate it. I think it looks like an art gallery, not a home.”
“It’s supposed to be an investment.”
“Do you plan to live here for a while?”
“Unless plans change.”
Unless he ended up in Washington...
He waved an elegant hand around the space. “What would you do, then, with it?”
She gave the open-concept, stark room a critical once-over. “I would add some of that color you love, maybe a gray blue for the walls. Carpets to give it warmth, definitely. And maybe some exotic accents.”
He cradled the big wineglass in his palm. “You think that’s me?”
“I think it’s complex like you are... You aren’t cold like this, Harrison. You’re layered, you have great depth of feeling when you allow yourself to experience it.”
Suprisingly, he didn’t back away from the assessment. His
face was lost in thought as he sat there in a rare still moment. “I can’t afford to be emotional right now,” he said finally, his dark lashes coming down to veil his expression. “Too many things depend on me being level-headed.”
“My father always taught me to go with my gut,” she countered. “He said the rest will come if you start with what’s in your heart.”
He lifted his ebony gaze to her. “What if your heart’s conflicted?”
Her heart squeezed at the admission. “You need to find out why.”
He rested his head against the sofa and stared over at the beautiful Chagalls, both of them in place now. Frankie swallowed hard. “Where is the push for politics coming from? Is it your dream or is it your father’s unfinished one?”
He blinked as if he couldn’t believe she’d said it. Her hands tightened around the glass, her pulse speeding up. The moment hung in the air between them like an irreversible stepping stone to an intimacy he didn’t know how to traverse. Then he sat back and swirled the wine in his glass, his eyes on the ruby-red liquid. “It’s both,” he said finally. “Politics is in my blood. In my family’s blood...My grandfather was a congressman, my father would have been governor had he not taken his own life. You talked about giving back to the community on our flight to London... I want to do that. There are so many things I want to change, things I know I can change. But am I the right man for the job? This isn’t about what I want. It’s about what this nation needs.”
Frankie felt the overwhelming sense of responsibility coming off him in waves. She couldn’t imagine how he felt, but she could try. “I think the country needs hope and vision,” she said quietly. “People need someone to believe in. I’ve seen you lead, Harrison. You’ve turned a company that was on the verge of disappearing into one of the most powerful in the world. You know how to do this.”
He was silent for a long time then. His eyes when he looked at her held that same darkness she’d seen that night she’d rescued him from himself. “Sometimes too great an ambition can destroy a man.”
He’s worried about becoming his father. Suddenly she understood what had been eating him that night, what had been eating him ever since he’d signed that contract with Leonid. I am the darkness, he’d said to her that night in Long Island, I would only drag you down there with me. He was afraid of being consumed by the same disease that had taken his father. And who wouldn’t be?
She put her wineglass down, got up and settled herself on his lap, knees on either side of his muscular thighs. “You are not your father,” she said, cupping his jaw in her hands. “He was sick. You are strong.”
His body tautened beneath her like a big cat ready to spring free, but she held his gaze firm in hers. He inhaled deeply, then exhaled, a warm rush of air brushing her cheeks. “He fell apart the night before he announced he was running for governor. I think after what Markovic did, the pressure was too much for him.”
Her heart ripped to shreds. “He was on the verge of losing everything. It’s understandable. You, you are walking into this having conquered. That’s a whole different thing. I’ve watched you do superhuman things. You do what the analysts say can’t be done.”
His mouth twisted. “Expectations are a bitch, Frankie.”
She smiled at that. “I know all about expectations. I’d be running Masserias right now if I’d done what everyone expected of me, and it wouldn’t have been the right road for me.” She fanned her fingers over his beautiful, tense face, so full of everyone’s expectations but his own. “Figure out if this is your dream. If it is, make it happen. If it isn’t, walk away.”
He captured her fingers in his own, the depth of emotion in his dark eyes making her heart turn over. “I’m done lecturing,” she murmured, tugging her fingers away to start undoing the top buttons of his shirt. “Should we discuss the weather now?”
A new emotion joined the ones spiraling through his conflicted gaze. Desire. “Only if the forecast involves all my clothes coming off,” he said roughly.
“Eventually.” She dropped her mouth to his hard, muscular torso as her fingers worked the last buttons free. He shrugged out of the shirt and sat back. Her fingers went for his belt, sliding it free from the buckle with industrious swiftness. Her lips and tongue made a foray down over the hard wall of his abdomen. The muscles beneath her lips contracted with every inch she traveled, until she reached the waistband of his pants. His breath was faster now, his anticipation firing her blood.
“Hell, Frankie...”
She undid his pants. Slid the zipper down and released him. He was all hers, this powerful man, and she wanted all of him. All of him.
His intake of breath drowned out the blood pounding against her eardrums. She had never done this for him, had never done it for any man. But he was too intoxicating to resist. She bent her head and took him into her mouth.
He cursed and arched beneath her. She refused to let him hurry her, taking her time exploring every musky, potent inch of him that knew how to give her such pleasure. He was big and beautiful and she was shocked at how much she loved touching him like this. Tasting him. It was such a potent turn-on it threw her right into the melee with him. When his hands bit into her biceps and he lifted her from him to rid himself of his pants and then her of her underwear, she didn’t protest. Her dress bunched in his hands, he brought her down on him in a joining so fierce, so complete, it stole the breath from her lungs.
“Was that enough of the angel for you?” she murmured when she finally recovered enough to meet his dark, bottomless gaze.
His eyes glittered back at her. “You are my angel,” he murmured in a gritty voice that made her heart swell. “I love how you rescue me.”
She closed her eyes as his hands on her hips guided her down over him again. “You make me crazy,” he told her on a half groan. “I can’t make this last.”
She dug her fingers into the hard muscle of his shoulders to tell him he didn’t need to. His fingers clutched her hips in an almost painful grip as he took over the rhythm, driving them both to a powerful climax. It rocked her, taking her apart from the inside.
Shivers snaked through her as he stroked his hand down her spine, his touch on her skin a sensory overload. Emotional overload.
He carried her to bed and made love to her again. Frankie thought that finally, in the aftermath, her head on his shoulder, she had cracked the beast. That she had found what it was inside of him that had needed to be found. Healed. For if she hadn’t, she had most certainly just sealed her own fate.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE NIGHT BEFORE Harrison confronted Anton Markovic in Washington, Frankie’s family invited them to dinner at Masserias. She was concerned, he knew, about how tunnel-visioned he’d become in the past few days and was attempting to distract him. It was a good attempt, her boisterous clan loud and entertaining, but tomorrow was weighing heavily on his mind.
He should have felt settled, confident, with everything in place. He’d brought Siberius under the Grant fold with what looked as if it was going to be minimal intervention from the regulators. He knew exactly when and where he would intercept Markovic. But still the rush wasn’t coming. The bloodthirsty urge to tear the Russian from limb to limb that had fueled so much of his adult life hadn’t materialized. Instead grim determination defined him. A desire to put a chapter of his life to rest. To avenge the honor of his family. His father.
Frankie’s clear, perfect laughter filled the table. Salvatore was teasing her about her taste in music. The happiness written across her face touched something deep inside him. He knew it was she who was changing him. She who was balancing out his extreme emotions. Every day he spent with her he felt more whole, more at peace. She was more than he ever could have anticipated having. Wanting. He couldn’t feel numb with Frankie in his life. She surrounded him in emotion. But having lived so long without it, it was as if he was in the middle of a maze with untold treasures at the end of it, but if he took a wrong turn, it could all end in disas
ter.
Terrifying.
He took a sip of his Chianti. Forced himself out of his introspection. The Masserias were a fascinating clan to watch as they interacted. He’d never seen such a close-knit unit. Even though all of them were different, from psychologist Federica, with her dry wit and calm demeanor, to Salvatore, Frankie’s favorite, with his aggressive, acerbic personality, the depth of caring between the siblings was obvious. They may not all be close—indeed Frankie had filled him in on the tensions between the different factions—but he had the feeling they would all do anything for one another if push came to shove. The bonds were that strong.
A pang seared his heart. He had never had this, a family unit to support him. Not even before his father had gotten sick. It had all been about building the empire for Clifford Grant. About ascending in society. Family had taken a backseat. But he did have Coburn, whom he’d once been close with, the only warmth that had existed within the cold, formal Grant family walls. But his brother’s attempt to party and daredevil his way out of his grief had pushed them far apart, a gap that had grown with every year.
He took another sip of his wine and set the glass down. It was eating away at him, had been ever since Frankie had offered that observation about them that night at the office. He hadn’t realized until then how much he had missed his brother.
His gaze collided with Vanni Masseria’s across the table. Frankie’s father was watching him with a probing look: measured, assessing. As if he was weighing his intentions. Harrison met his gaze evenly. It was easy to see where Frankie got her charm and wisdom. Vanni was a charismatic, self-made man who knew himself. Who knew the world from the perspective of a successful man who’d worked hard and prospered just like Harrison’s own father had. He also knew Harrison was older than his daughter and much more worldly. That if he put himself in a presidential race it would thrust Frankie into a cutthroat, very public world she’d never known.
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